Peter, 

I think that's a good point, but OCLC knew upfront that this is the model
for this product when they acquired it.  So, this should have been part of
the calculation when considering the acquisition -- but this component fills
a very important part of their overall authentication stack for a lot of
their other services (we are talking about Article proxying, but it's used
with Illiad, WorldCat Local, WMS -- so it has a lot of different uses and
has been enhanced a lot if you are a user of these other services.

I think that OCLC does a good job shepherding the development, but I think
Andrew hits why it would be useful to have an open alternative.  It's very
likely that even with an open alternative, you cannot completely divorce
yourself from Ezproxy if you use another OCLC services.  But I've had a
number of times recently where I would have loved the ability to hack the
proxy.

--tr

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Peter Murray
Sent: Monday, February 3, 2014 4:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] EZProxy changes / alternatives ?

I think it also useful to think about this from the service provider's
perspective.  There have been a few calls for enhancements/fixes in this
thread, but with no source of ongoing revenue (for self-hosted
installations, at least) I don't know how we can realistically expect the
service provider to devote resources to those enhancements/fixes.  The $500
paid for the perpetual right to run the software is good if you never expect
the software to change, particularly for something that has the market
saturation that EZproxy does (since there is a decreasing number of new
subscribers to pay the bills for added development).  The same could be said
for paying the way of the technical writers to write documentation for the
new features added to the system.


Peter
--
Peter Murray
Assistant Director, Technology Services Development LYRASIS
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